Have you (OP) checked if the CL's have any price guarantees to see if you want to work that angle?
We booked our E. Carib RCI cruise about 11months in advance. They have a price protection guarantee where if you make final payment and the cruise price goes down, you get the difference in onboard credit. We ended up with $500USD in onboard credit when we finally sailed in Dec09. Surprisingly, we were able to get unspent credit (only about $25) refunded on the last day.

Also, if you're a "gambler", if you think the cruise isn't going to be full, you can also just book an inside or outside guarantee and hope for an upgrade. Alaska cruises in 09 were hurting so we grabbed one of the many deals and we were upgraded from inside to outside on Celebrity Millennium. And for our December cruise, where we watched prices fall, we were upgraded from inside to a inside promenade cabin on Liberty OTS.

Possible. The variable is that there seems to have been a bunch of new ships launched in 2009 that added a chunk of capacity. Granted tho, the extra capacity doesn't translate like extra hotel capacity in a city.